January « 2010 « A2Politico: Ann Arbor Politics Grilled To Perfection

January 28, 2010

The Politics of Unscrambling Eggs: Hieftje, Teall & Hohnke Push $6.4 Million For Environmentally Regressive Single Stream Recycling

Filed under: best of A2Politico, environment, recycling — Tags: A2Politico, Carsten Hohnke, dual stream recycling, Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, Resource Recycling Systems, single stream recycling, Susan Collins, The Container Recycling Institute, Tom McMurtrie — A2 Politico @ 2:31 pm

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When Mayor Hieftje speaks, he likes to tell city taxpayers life is tougher elsewhere in Michigan. Life’s tough in Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa, too.

When Hizzoner plays this game, it’s like when your mother used to remind you at dinner that there were starving kids in India so you should darn well pipe down, eat the creamed spinach served to you, and be grateful for her cooking. A few months ago, the Mayor of Ann Arbor sent around an email to his electronic friends giving those select few forwarders of mayoral missives an update of how things were going in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Troy. In those cities, they’re having real problems, not like here in Ann Arbor. Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge.

“We live in truly challenging times,” the Mayor wrote. What he forgot to mention is that the challenges we face are, in part, a direct result of his votes, policy initiatives, and development decisions. Ah, well, that’s why A2Politico exists.

The latest effort to waste our money comes to us thanks to Mayor Hieftje, Ward Four’s Margie Teall and Ward Five’s Carsten Hohnke. I’m talking single-stream recycling. Perhaps recycling is not the religion at your house that it is at ours thanks to my conversion at the hands of a fanatical recycler whom I got hitched to almost 20 years ago. Actually, to say that recycling is the religion at our house doesn’t do justice to the term “worship.” For those readers who are slightly less fanatical, let’s do some quick recycling review.

The chart below taken from the city’s web site shows quite clearly that the number of tons of material recycled in Ann Arbor has remained virtually unchanged for a decade, whereas materials put into the landfill has increased slightly in each of the past three years, as have materials composted (albeit slightly). To be sure, comparing 1991 and 2006, there are 15 fewer tons of materials going into the landfill overall. However, between the same time period, tons recycled did not increase proportionately. The most impressive growth, in fact, came in the composting program, with the tons of material composted rising from 4 tons in 1991 to 12 tons in 2006.

Compost

In 2008, 41 percent of the Ann Arbor waste stream was diverted from the landfill – either composted or recycled. The U.S. EPA has recognized Ann Arbor as one of the top recycling and composting communities in the country for having such a high recovery rate. The U.S. recycling rate, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office, is 32 percent.

In cities such as Minneapolis and Philadelphia, financial incentives are used to achieve high recycling participation, rates higher than Ann Arbor’s. Minneapolis residents who actively participate in the city’s recycling program through processing, sorting, separating, and bagging their recyclables receive a $7 credit in their monthly garbage (solid waste) bill. In Philadelphia, households participating in the RecycleBank program receive up to $25 per month in coupons—based on the weight of their recyclable materials—that can be redeemed at major retailers. In 2006, Berkeley diverted 57 percent of its solid waste from their landfill. By 2010, the city has a goal of diverting 75 percent of its solid waste.

Enough numbers. On to your part in this drama.

At present, the city has the cooperative volunteer effort of thousands of citizens (you, for example) to separate their recyclable containers from paper and cardboard. The items are collected separately, a system known as dual stream recycling.

However, our City Council members now believe we should mix recyclables so that they can pay people to separate them later. According to a 2007 study done by the California Department of Conservation that focuses on moving from dual stream to single stream programs, single stream programs “dramatically increased internal costs because poorly sorted materials demand new and upgraded feedstock cleaning systems, increased maintenance, and more frequent equipment repair and replacement….”

Is single stream better for you? Of course. Throwing everything that’s recyclable into the same container is right up there with the delicious evil pleasure of leaving your socks on the floor, and having someone come along and pick them up. Single stream recycling is like a night in The Big Easy. Lots of feeling good.

There’s just one little problem associated with living it up, and that’s the hangover. With respect to single-stream recycling, more compliance actually leads to problems. According to the same 2007 study done by the California Department of Conservation, “However, the introduction of single stream collection systems has not had such uniformly positive results for recycled product manufacturers. Instead, it has accelerated an already pronounced slide towards poorly sorted recovered materials, with glass, plastics and metals being delivered to paper mills in bales of fiber, the wrong types of fiber going to paper mills that can only use specific grades, and increased contamination, as well as materials lost to plastics, glass and aluminum manufacturers. Recyclable materials that were recovered for recycling in community programs but then sent to the wrong types of manufacturers generally end up in landfills….”

At the moment, single stream recycling actually leads to more materials ending up in landfills. Recycling experts are confident this won’t always be the case, but until the quality issues are resolved, single stream recycling is ecologically regressive. Perhaps this is because single stream innovations were first introduced by collection companies, and collection is where the efficiencies and cost savings are concentrated. However, the result is that the recycled material from single stream processing is of a much lower quality than from dual stream processes. The lower value of the material offsets the greater volume that may be recycled.

Yet another study, this one by The Container Recycling Institute (CRI), recently concluded that single stream recycling is often more expensive and less desirable for the environment than dual stream. The reason is simply that it is difficult to separate the streams. The Executive Director of CRI, Susan Collins, puts it this way: “you can’t unscramble an egg.”

The CRI study also concluded single stream was less desirable for the environment. The reason is that single stream results in greater contamination of the recycled material and subsequent down graded use. Explained simply, the most environmentally desirable use of a bottle is to refill it as a bottle. This does not require new raw materials and uses the least energy. The next most desirable use is to remelt it to make another bottle. This uses more energy, but no new materials. The least desirable is to use the material as fill. In this case new raw material and the greatest amount of energy is required to make the next container. The difficulty of separating of containers in single stream recycling lead to more material being used as simple fill. In some cases the contaminated recyclables are simply sent to the land fill.

How much is the Teall & Hohnke Single Stream Show costing Ann Arbor Taxpayers?

Carts $1,428.000
New trucks to collect material from the carts $1,156,000
Additional Material Recovery Facility Equipment $3,250,000
Expansion of the Material Recovery Facility $500,000
Contract to Resource Recycling Systems $103,000
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $6,437,000

In addition to wasted tax dollars, citizens will suffer reduction in recycling service. The city’s single stream recycling project Manager, Tom McMurtrie, has said that the curb-side recycling program will no longer collect engine oil, batteries or florescent lights. Citizens can still drop these off at the recycle center, but there is a $3 charge for each vehicle entering the center as well as a fee for taking these hazardous materials.

People will, of course, simply put these hazardous materials in the solid waste cart and send them to the land fill. That’s what those who’ve studied single stream recycling tell us.

We are told that single stream recycling will be a benefit, because the city will now collect additional types of plastic containers. Recycled plastics have the lowest resale value. Besides, the city could simply accept these same plastics under the auspices of the present dual stream program. Citizens will send the most toxic materials to the landfill, and in exchange Ann Arbor will keep inert plastic from going to the landfill. That is an exceptionally poor environmental trade-off.

So who does benefit? The recycling collection industry and the city staff. The recycling industry is having a difficult time being profitable. People aren’t buying as much ’stuff.’ When they don’t buy ’stuff,’ they don’t discard as much ’stuff.’ With less material to process the recycling industry is looking for a source of more revenue. Mixing the recycling streams, and then paying the industry to separate the materials increases revenue.

The consultants benefit. Resource Recycling Systems prepared the presentation to Council recommending the transition to single stream recycling. They were subsequently awarded a six-figure contract to help implement the single stream system. We should be very concerned about the objectivity of a recommendation, when the entity making the recommendation has a strong economic interest in the outcome.

The city management benefits because they now have a larger program to manage. They will collect more tonnage than before, that is often the measure of the success of a municipal recycling program. In short they have better bragging rights. (See chart above.)

Spending over $6 million of the solid waste fund to implement single stream recycling is an environmental step backward for Ann Arbor. The sheer number of tons diverted from our landfill doesn’t mean single stream is good for the environment. The contaminated bales of recycled materials end up in other landfills. Well, at least when the three of them run for re-election this August, you can toss their campaign literature right into the cart along with the literature of the other Council candidates who voted to waste $6.4 million on sending more recyclables to the landfill. Save the literature of candidates who will vote to suspend single stream recycling until the program matches dual stream in quality, cost and efficiency.

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January 27, 2010

The Politics of Parks: It’s Not the Just The Grass That Needs to Be Cut

Filed under: money, parks — Tags: Craig Covey, Food Gatherers, Gathering Gardens, Jayne Miller, Margie Teall, Meredith Wilson, Roger Fraser — A2 Politico @ 12:32 pm

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As always, with thanks to American lyricist Meredith Wilson:

There’s trouble in River City. That’s trouble with a capital T that rhymes with M and that stands for mowing.

(chorus) Mowing. Mowing. Mowing. Mowing.

I say there’s trouble, right here in River City. That’s trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Plowing.

(chorus) Plowing. Plowing. Plowing. Plowing.

As you may remember (or not) this week the financial services department presented our City Council members with a list of suggestions concerning how our city could save money on park upkeep. Two of the solutions were to stop mowing certain areas in certain parks, and to stop plowing certain areas in certain parks.

In going through the document presented to Council, I read this:

Issue: Discontinue maintaining some parks; which ones would be recommended?

Response: Approximately 40-50 acres of parkland has been identified where mowing can be eliminated or reduced. Cost savings related to this are difficult to estimate, as there will still be partial mowing at most of the park sites. There will still be fixed costs associated with travel time to each park location, equipment costs, and other costs associated with the FY10 estimated per acre mowing costs of $4,000/acre, per year. A variable cost such as fuel would be reduced.

So, we have the financial services staff telling us we can save money by reducing mowing and plowing in our parks. You bet your grass-catcher we can. The City’s Community Services Area Manager Jayne Miller has been squeezing $4,000 per acre for mowing costs out of Ann Arbor taxpayers. That means for the city’s Park’s Department to come and mow your one-quarter acre lot would be $1,000 per year. So, I decided to look around at what other cities pay to mow their parks and whether they do it at all.

Let’s start in Kansas, Dorothy.

The city of Newton, Kansas, a bedroom community of Wichita (population 361,000), took 112 acres of parkland off of its mowing schedule, not by simply eliminating mowing. The town decided to plant the land with a combination of native grasses and hay. The calculated yearly mowing savings for the 112 acres was $75,985. That’s a yearly per acre mowing cost of $678 dollars.

In December of 2009, it was reported that Des Moines, IA (pop. 197,000) city council decided to allow the parks department to stop mowing about 100 acres of the city’s 3,200 acres of parkland for a savings of $235,000 per year. That’s a yearly per acre mowing cost of $2,350.

In Berkeley, California, they use (I kidd you not) sheep and goats at $500-$800 per acre to keep park lawns trimmed. Just like beekeepers who truck in bees to pollinate crops, herders go into Berkeley parks with their flocks of goats or sheep (sheep are used in areas with landscaping, as they stick to the grass; goats will eat anything).

With respect to Jayne Miller’s $4,000 per acre per year mowing costs, I haven’t seen such shocking math since City Administrator Roger Fraser and the City Treasurer went before Council with their comparison “study” on parking fine data to justify jacking up parking fines. In Ann Arbor we’re paying more per hour to park on street than residents of L.A., and costlier expired meter parking fines than residents of Seattle. Park mowing costs? We’re paying more per acre per year to mow our parks than taxpayers in cities half the size of Ann Arbor and twice the size of Ann Arbor.

If our mayor and council people could learn one lesson, it’s to take the costs for municipal services presented to them by city staff, and do some serious comparison shopping. Can you imagine Fourth Ward’s Margie Teall paying $4,000 per acre to mow at her house? She asked for a year to refund to the city the under $500 pay cut she recently volunteered to take. As much as I’m appalled that no one on Council questioned the $4,000 per acre calculated cost for mowing, I have to say I’m completely behind community services policy changes for city park mowing for some big picture ecological reasons.

Let’s look at mowing from an ecological perspective. At our house, we use a reel mower, and have used one for a decade. The youngest tot did some grass patrol last summer, and learned the art of using the hand-trimmers, as well. No gas-powered weed-whacker at the ChezA2Politico The sweat equity in the yard was a revelation for the tot. Here’s some information that may be a revelation for you. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a traditional gas powered lawn mower produces as much air pollution as 43 new cars each being driven 12,000 miles. Gas-powered mowers produce 5 percent of the the nation’s air pollution according to the EPA. Well over 5 million gas powered mowers are still sold in the U.S. every year. A typical 3.5 horsepower gas mower, for instance, can emit the same amount of VOCs —key precursors to smog — in an hour as a new car driven 340 miles, say industry experts.

Gas-powered mowing of our parks should have been completely phased out years ago, certainly when gasoline hit $5 per gallon, because at $2.80 a gallon it’s no bargain when you use thousands of gallons every week to maintain 2,000 acres of parkland. Zero emission lawn care isn’t a trend; it’s a health, financial and environmental no-brainer. Would you give up your gas guzzling lawnmower in exchange for a subsidy from the city? In 2009, Craig Covey, Mayor of Ferndale, pushed a program (no pun intended) for residents so they get a subsidy for turning in their gas powered mowers and purchasing electric or reel mowers. It’s voluntary, and has been very successful. Ann Arbor should implement a similar program for its residents.

Had Jayne Miller recommended to City Council five years ago that Ann Arbor invest in electric mowing technology (or had anyone on Council had the ecological good sense to suggest it), the significant savings in gasoline and diesel fuel each year could have been reinvested in native planting plugs and the creation of prairies at parks, further reducing the need for mowing. Savings could have been invested, as well, in expanding the plowing of bike lanes and walking paths to encourage biking and walking.

How about this idea? The city could partner with Food Gatherers to take grass that needs to be mowed out of parks, and put Gathering Gardens in to feed the hungry. The city would up its human services contribution in tangible goods. Lease 25 percent of the parkland identified as infrequently used and in need of mowing to Food Gatherers for Gathering Farms. The 1/2 acre farm on Dhu Varren produced 30,000 pounds of produce this past year.

Food Gatherers, alas, has no interest in partnering with the city on such a project. FG’s leaders have no desire to work with the current bureaucratic leadership in Ann Arbor. That’s s shame, and needs to change if elected officials are serious about partnerships and cooperation as cost-saving strategies.

Back to the $4,000 per acre charged to taxpayers to mow our parks and golf courses: I have another suggestion to financial services staff. Bring the per acre mowing costs in line with what is paid for the same service in other similarly-sized cities as opposed to cutting services. To get staff to do this, Council members are going to have to educate themselves, and be prepared to push staff to justify the shockingly high municipal charges for park maintenance.

It also means rewarding staff for coming up with long-term creative solutions to save on costs associated with the municipal services provided. City Administrator Roger Fraser’s management style is neither creative nor compensatory. What if we offered staff members a one time payment of 5 percent of all savings solutions they devise? Perhaps one of our city’s parks workers would have suggested zero emissions landscaping years ago.

Instead, Ann Arbor taxpayers routinely suffer the results of the least imaginative management strategy possible: service cuts.

Popularity: 38% [?]

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January 26, 2010

The Politics of Cooking the Books: Ann Arbor As A French Restaurant

Filed under: best of A2Politico, money — Tags: A2Politico, Dan Rainey, Leigh Greden, Liz Brater, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, Pam Byrnes, Rebekah Warren, Roger Fraser, Stephen Kunselman, Stephen Postema, Stephen Rapundalo, Tom Crawford — A2 Politico @ 2:00 pm

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The city’s General Fund is a train wreck.

Property tax revenues are tumbling down like the walls of Jericho.

Housing prices are falling.

Ok. That last one is true. A2Politico being, well, A2Politico, and having a suspicious, cynical and curious nature, I went to the city’s web site, and took a look at the most recent audited financial statement. It’s a 100+ page document, and the best reading for understanding the overall picture of the city’s financial situation is in the section titled, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis.” During the last City Council races, self-proclaimed “budget expert,” Third Ward’s Leigh Greden (defeated by Stephen Kunselman in August 2009) harped on the fact that the state shared revenue is down, kind of like a wind-up doll.

Hizzoner is also fond of pointing out the woes associated with the city getting less revenue sharing from the state. As we can see from the chart I made, state shared revenues are down. Time to take our state representatives, Pam Byrnes and Rebekah Warren not to mention our state senator, Liz Brater, out back and rough the girls up a bit, maybe break their eyelash curlers.

State shared revenues have fallen by 50 percent since 2002. What’s up with the shared revenues? Well, partially, the state isn’t collecting as much revenue to share. Partially, our state legislators are playing hardball with municipalities and not doling out the same percentage of revenues, but rather holding on to them and using that money to shore up the state’s leaky tub of a budget. We could talk about the fact that the tub is leaking because there are state legislators with gold-plated augers, who went about creating the holes, but let’s stick with Ann Arbor for the time being. Take a look at the chart below. All the information is from CAFR statements posted to the city’s web site:

Year	Property Tax Revenue	State Shared Revenues	Business-type Activities	Total Revenue	Total Expenses	Total Debt Service
2002	58,095,088	21,877,296	46,978,051	155,479,402	135,016,056	1,029,598
2006	62,017,866	12,604,477	73,539,483	176,649,150	144,522,183	1,539,263
2009	69,994,107	11,102,183	68,882,686	190,244,281	184,811,290	3,229,523

You’ll note that between 2002 and 2009 property tax revenues rose. Now, look right to the “Business-type activites” column. First, you’re thinking, “what the hell are ‘business type activities’ that bring revenue to the city?” Good question, I’m glad you asked. Try to keep the swearing to a minimum. Those activities include: water, sewer, parking, Farmer’s Market, golf courses, airport, stormwater management. and solid waste (i.e. trash and recycling) removal.

On the Mayor’s website he croons: “At the root of my work as mayor is the desire to protect and improve the quality of life in my hometown. This includes holding down the city portion of taxes to make life here more affordable while at the same time delivering services as efficiently as possible.” I don’t know what kind of “root” he’s referring to, but I think it might be something like Devil’s Claw.

Now, if you’re a clever one, and I think you are, you’ll understand how the Mayor, that Demublican teller of half-truths, can claim on his web site, in his campaign literature and speeches to have “held down the city portion of taxes.” Anyone? Anyone? You, in the back? Mayor and Council have voted to raise the cost of those “business-type activities” provided to taxpayers by 65 percent since 2002. Con artists call it the Old Shell Game. Mayor Hieftje calls it, “holding down the city portion of taxes” to make Ann Arbor more affordable. Right. Here’s another fairy tale for you: Santa Claus is a jolly old fat man who lives at the North Poll with Mrs. C., Rudolph, and the elves.

Now, those of you who are on a tight budget, perhaps, Krogering more often than you used to, and bypassing Plum Market and Whole Foods, look at the total expenses line. As revenues rose, expenses rose, as well, despite the drop in state revenue sharing. In other words, those in charge of the city’s budget, City Administrator Roger Fraser, City CFO Tom Crawford, not to mention Mayor and City Council who are supposed to oversee the work of city staff, went merrily along and lived large, larger and, by 2009, largest. In other words, the more revenues that could be squeezed out of taxpayers through back-door taxation (raising the rates for those business-type activities), the more Mayor and Council allowed city staff to spend.

It’s really that simple. In business terms, under the current Mayor and City Council’s direction, they allowed the city staff to take the city backwards financially, to raise revenues significantly, and to spend, spend, spend.

Now, let’s throw in the debt service, which has more than tripled, since 2002. It’s clear that by allowing expenses to rise at the same pace as revenues, (referred to as “spending every dime you earn and then some,”) our city had no real money to make debt payments out of revenues.

What would you do at your house? Would you build an underground parking garage and incur more debt? Would you build a new city hall and incur more debt? Would you rein in expenses related to running government, and defer non-essential capital improvements?

What’s the answer? First off, anyone who has ever touched a checkbook knows that it’s neigh on fiduciary negligence that no one on the Council Budget and Labor Committee over the past five years (Ward Four’s Marcia Higgins, and Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, and Stephen Rapundalo), ever bothered to bring to Council the issue of the unsustainable yearly rises in spending.

Instead, city staff were allowed by the City Council Budget Committee’s inattention or sheer ignorance, to bring budget proposals to Council to cut high profile programs and services, such as human services funding, Mack Pool and the Burns Park Senior Center. Meanwhile, the cost of running city government was raging out of control. Now we have the proposal to sell parkland. City income tax or sell parkland? Burn to death or freeze to death? Those are always the only options given Ann Arbor taxpayers.

All of this leads us to Grandpa. He’s on life support. On January 25, 2010, financial services staff presented Council with a document that outlines pulling the plug on Grandpa. To pay the bills they’ve been allowed to run up, city staff have come up with the brilliant idea that we can sell our parkland. No matter that it’s the worst possible time to sell land since the Great Depression. We need to the money, Daddy. You’ll be terrified to know that in the meantime, A2P hears Hizzoner is all over town glad-handing, telling would-be voters that ”At the root of his work as mayor is the desire to protect and improve the quality of life in my hometown. This includes holding down the city portion of taxes to make life here more affordable while at the same time delivering services as efficiently as possible.”

If the chart above should make anything clear, it’s that for the past ten years John Hieftje and City Council members have kicked back, collected paychecks, and let city staff spend every dime they could squeeze out of the city’s overburdened taxpayers. Do we want to live in a city where citizen services are provided like side dishes in a French restaurant?

Are you prepared to hear the following:

“You want solid waste service? Zat is extra, mon petite tax vache.”

City services in Ann Arbor, a city with some of the highest per capita property taxes in the state, are slowly becoming ala carte items on the bureaucrats’ menu.

Unless we get a new head chef, and send John Hiefje packing, we can look forward to being pitched a city income tax along with the sale of parkland. Here’s a better pitch. We need to elect a mayor and council who will make the financial services staff put together a scenario that reduces city operating expenses by 20 percent without a single cut to city services.

Can you hear the screaming? That’s Roger Fraser— upon learning his car allowance has been eliminated and his salary reduced by 10 percent, and IT Director Dan Rainey upon learning that his $ 7 million dollar IT budget has been reduced by 30 percent. We can’t hear City Attorney Stephen Postema’s screaming. His $2.5 million dollar department was outsourced.

Popularity: 44% [?]

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January 25, 2010

The Politics Of Email “Revelations”: Taking A MacBook To A Knife Fight

Filed under: Sabra Briere, city council, developers, politicians — Tags: A2Politico, AnnArborChronicle.com, Jesse Bernstein, Karen Sidney, Lady Gaga, LocalAnnArbor, Marcia Higgins, Mayor Hieftje, Michigan Open Meetings Act, Mike Anglin, Pam Byrnes, Rene Greff, Roger Fraser, Sabra Briere, Stephen Postema, Stephen Rapundalo, Steve Kunselman, Vivienne Armentrout — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am

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Ann Arbor is bleeding money.

Since 2006, the cost of running our city government has increased $33 million dollars, or 35 percent. We have fewer police and firefighters than we did in 2005, but pay $13 million dollars per year more than we did in 2005 for the dregs of the emergency services Mayor Hieftje and Roger Fraser haven’t “streamlined” yet. We’re stocking up on water buckets at our house. We’ll toss water at the fire until the two fire boys in the truck get here.

There are some people who have been trying to get this message out to the general public for several years now. Want some insider baseball? Of course you do. Why else are you frittering away time on this blog, right?

The once-derided political “conspiracy theorists” in Ann Arbor have the cred now, and the politicians are scrambling to pick up the broken shards of their integrity before the summer campaigning season is upon us. The AnnArborChronicle.com photo of political activist Karen Sidney chatting it up with State Senate wanna-be Pam Byrnes says it all. In a May of 2009 piece, the Ann Arbor News political writer Judy McGovern described Sydney as “a regular critic of City Council.” Read: crackpot complainer.

Sydney

Photo by David Askins, AnnArborChronicle.com

One short month later, in June 2009, thanks to a FOIA of Council emails, readers of the Ann Arbor News discovered that there was a conspiracy. There were vote-rigging, scripted debates, time spent on Facebook and planning judicial campaigns in the middle of City Council meetings.

Unfortunately some people never learn. Our local politicos are trying to defend their integrity by using the same old strategies they used before Ann Arborites read in June and July 2009 in front page stories in the Ann Arbor News about emails between Council members during open meetings that were, well, less than professional and, a pending lawsuit alleges, illegal under the auspices of the Michigan Open Meetings Act. Our Mayor and Council members are rationalizing, dissembling, and ignoring mounting citizen concerns and criticisms of the process under the auspices of which the Library Lot RFP proposals have been evaluated. That’s always the best way to inspire confidence. Even the newspaper weighed in with an editorial in which the writer hoped the RFP process would be “open and honest.”

It is a serious allegation to say that city officials colluded with a developer. It is equally serious to allege that city officials conducted a sham RFP process to develop the Library Lot parcel in order to cover up the collusion. First Ward Council member Sabra Briere recently circulated an email containing “clarifying information” to a select group of people hoping, of course, the email would be forwarded. In that email, she makes allegations that well before there was talk of issuing an RFP to solicit proposals to built atop the 1.2 acre Library Lot parcel, Mayor Hieftje, former Chamber of Commerce Jesse Bernstein and City Administrator Roger Fraser, settled on the idea that Ann Arbor needed a convention center.

Here’s a sad truth: she compounded the problem for citizens concerned about the transparency and honesty of the RFP process, not to mention the propensity of our elected officials to sneak around. Briere chose the worst possible medium for disseminating her allegations—an email sent to 120 people. There are 96,000 registered voters in Ann Arbor. She disseminated her “clarifying” information in such a way that allows those whose actions and motives she questions, to continue on, unfettered. The email leaves Briere free to throw up her hands and say, “But I told everyone what I knew!”

Feeling used and manipulated yet?

Briere did little except launch an email shitzu storm. Elected officials with integrity, and who believe they have allegations of wrong-doing, launch investigations. Yes, it would have been Briere’s word against the words of the Mayor, Bernstein and Fraser. However, that’s why the FBI has been showing up in towns across the U.S. (including cities in Michigan) to objectively investigate allegations of corruption in local government. This is from the FBI web site:

Does the FBI investigate graft and corruption in local government and in state and local police departments?

Yes. The FBI uses applicable federal laws, including the Hobbs Act, to investigate violations by public officials in federal, state, and local governments. A public official is any person elected, appointed, employed, or otherwise has a duty to maintain honest and faithful public service. Most violations occur when the official asks, demands, solicits, accepts, receives, or agrees to receive something of value in return for influence in the performance of an official act. The categories of public corruption investigated by the FBI include legislative, judicial, regulatory, contractual, and law enforcement.

There’s even a list of hotlines on the FBI web site that citizens can call to discuss their concerns about allegations of corruption on the part of local politicos.

People who have commented on the post in which I simply reproduced Briere’s email seem to have taken exception to the fact that I couldn’t seem to find the good in Briere’s release of the “information.”

Is it me? What information?

You can read Briere’s email here. She also shared it with AnnArbor.com. So far, none of those whom Briere fingers in her email have come forward to refute her claims. My guess is that none of them will. Why should they? They don’t have to say a word, and the train will just steam on down the track.

It would have been infinitely better for everyone if City Council member Sabra Briere had brought up her issues at a public City Council meeting. Those about whom she writes in her email would have, I’m sure, had something to say about the allegations had they been made during an open meeting. Then, the public and law enforcement agencies would have had a videotaped record.

Right now, what we have is an email from Briere sent to a limited group of about 120 people on her email list alleging, well, that Chamber of Commerce President Jesse Bernstein was upset because he thought the Valiant Group’s proposal should be fast-tracked. Briere writes, “At our meeting, Bernstein said he felt betrayed. He said that Valiant’s proposal for a conference center was a consensus project, and that it was not fair that Valiant should have to jump through all of these hoops.” Jesse Bernstein is free to feel betrayed about anything. Heck, he can feel betrayed because Lady Gaga won’t write a song for him and perform at his next birthday party, or because the democratic process slows down those with the belief that they know what’s best for everyone else. I think the term for people who find the democratic process way too inconvenient is “French aristocrat,” but I’ll have to check with one of my therapist friends. The real term may be something like “delusions of grandeur.”

Briere then alleges a June 14th meeting with Mayor Hieftje about which she writes, the Mayor “…loaned me a copy of a proposal titled ‘Ann Arbor Town Center’ from Valiant Partners LLD, dated May, 2009. On its cover was a green and white sticky note stating ‘Thanks, John. This is pretty interesting. Sandi.’”

Well, boychics, Briere ain’t got bubkas, so say the nice ladies at the Maj games going on around town. How my mother phrased it was slightly more prosaic: “She ain’t got diddly squat.” What we have, again, is Council member Briere’s word in an email against the Mayor’s, and no green and white sticky note, or copy of the proposal he gave to her.

Had she kept the proposal the Mayor gave her, and gone to the Press with it, or showed up at the next City Council meeting with it and asked just what in the name of Boss Tweed was going on with circulating such a proposal to City Council members from a group for a development project two months before the actual RFP was issued, we would be having a much different discussion in our city at this moment. One comment from my original post on the subject of Briere’s “clarifying” email was: “While I wish Council Member Briere had disclosed this information sooner, I believe the article focuses too much attention on that delay rather than on the content of her message. While it is perplexing why she might have held this information so long, it is wildly outrageous that others may have engaged in assisting one of the RFP developers over the last couple of years….Please provide more coverage of the misdeeds of those who seem to have made up their minds on building a conference center before releasing the RFP.”

Alas, timing is everything in this situation. It’s Briere’s delay that is the issue because the delay allowed those who were sneaking around behind the public’s back to keep doing so without being exposed or challenged by a member of the governing body on which they all sit. The public can come and speak before Council until we’re blue in the face (and regularly do), but it’s another matter entirely to have a member of City Council go on the record, in public, with the concerns that Briere chose to circulate via email to the people who will donate to her next campaign, or potentially vote for her in her next election.

It’s Sabra Briere’s delay and the way in which she “leaked” out her “clarifying information” that weakens the effectiveness of any coverage of the misdeeds of those who seem to have their minds made up on building a conference center before releasing the RFP.

I pieced together chain of repeated contact between RFP Advisory Committee members and the Valiant Group’s partners from FOIAed emails. The post is circumstantial evidence that city officials worked diligently to help the Valiant Group prepare its proposal, because it was the Valiant Group’s proposal City Administrator Roger Fraser, Chamber of Commerce former president Jesse Bernstein and Mayor John Hieftje wanted to have built—perhaps the three even promised the partners of the Valiant Group that their proposal would be built. LocalAnnArbor blogger Vivienne Armentrout has written on the RFP subject, and has provided what amounts to more circumstantial evidence that the RFP process was rigged. Armentrout writes about the Valiant Group as having had the “inside track.”

Sabra Briere, as her email shows quite clearly, had access to the people involved, and information circulated, that no regular citizen had. She chose to keep quiet because, one might posit, in June she was concerned with protecting her own political hide. Why? Because the deadline for filing petitions to run in the August 2009 City Council race was June 22, 2009. Briere ran unopposed from the Mayor’s camp. He showed her the proposal she mentions in her email on June 14, 2009.

So why send her “clarifying information” email in January 2010, an email that hangs Hieftje, Smith, Fraser and Bernstein (currently on the AATA Board) out to dry? My guess is that either Briere is entertaining the notion of running for Mayor, or that it has finally become clear to her that playing along with the Council majority will get her little, politically. Perhaps she has realized that she has alienated a growing section of her political base. Thus, Sabra Briere has, once again, become the Council member “concerned” enough about possible collusion, and alleged back-room deals to “expose” them. Sabra Briere wants her peeps to know she is not a part of the “Council cabal,” as former DDA Board member Rene Greff described Mayor Hieftje, Margie Teall, Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins and Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo in an interview with A2Politico.

I have to wonder if Sabra Briere shared her the information in her “clarifying information” email with any Council members other than Stephen Rapundalo in January 2010, some seven months after she was shown the Valiant Group’s proposal with a note that, purportedly, shows that Sandi Smith had been shown the proposal, as well. Did she talk to Third Ward’s Steve Kunselman or Ward Five’s Mike Anglin about the information in her “clarifying information” email?

Did Sabra Briere take her concerns to City Attorney Stephen Postema and ask for a written opinion on the legality of the Mayor showing around the Valiant Group’s Proposal to Council members months prior to issuance of the public RFP, and months before she could, potentially, be expected to vote on a proposal from the same group?

Sabra Briere’s “clarifying information” email did little for me except bring up a slew of discomforting questions. Furthermore, unless those named in her email are challenged directly during an open Council meeting by Council members with the cajones to do it, we can all look forward to business as usual: Mayor and Council will continue to run hell bent for leather to commit taxpayers to several more major multi-million dollar construction projects our city call ill-afford before August comes and, perhaps, people go to the polls with a “throw the bums out” mentality.

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January 22, 2010

The Politics of Business: Risk-taking Is For Suckers AKA Taxpayers

Filed under: economic development — Tags: A2Politico, Ann Arbor SPARK, AnnArbor.com, LDFA, Malcom Gladwell, Nathan Bomey, New Yorker, Representative John Dingell — A2 Politico @ 5:27 pm

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I have a tot who is a chef. Seriously. The kid can cook and bake like nobody’s business, and enjoys it. The word from the mouth of the babe is that perhaps we should start saving for tuition at the Le Cordon Bleu, or the Culinary Institute, in New York. I worked in the kitchen of a ritzy country club while in college. Let me share with you industrial kitchen virgins out there that cooking in a high-class joint for a living can be a kick-ass job. Where else will you get paid to watch a 55 year-old pantry worker wrap herself in plastic wrap and sing “Hey Big Spender” in her Catalan accent, and dance around the Sous Chef provocatively? “Da menute jew walked in the yoint….”

I still miss that country club job. If you can take the heat, the industrial kitchen in a ritzy eatery is a great place to work.

My advice to my budding chef is that you go to the local community college for a two-year degree in culinary arts and at the same time knock off the prereqs for a degree in business administration. Then, you transfer to Michigan and finish up a BBA at the B-School. After that, you’re off to make your mark on the culinary world. In addition to being a kick-ass chef, you’ll have the ability to speak intelligently to a banker when you want more money than I’ll probably have to give when you want to open your own “yoint,” where the big spenders will surely come to eat.

Food service is a risky business. The profit margin in that industry is way too small for my tastes. Show me a business with a 40-60 percent profit margin, and now we’re talking organic, free-range turkey. On AnnArbor.com today business reporter Nathan Bomey has a piece that argues Michigan entrepreneurs need to “embrace risk.” I like Bomey’s writing, as a rule, and appreciate the fact that he tackles the usual topics from unusual angles. As luck would have it, Malcom Gladwell has a piece in the Janaury 18, 2010 issue of the New Yorker that, in fact, argues that successful entrepreneurs do not take risks. This comes from Gladwell’s article:

“In a recent study ‘From Predators to Icons,’ the French scholars Michel Villette and Chatherine Vuillermot set out to uncover what successful entrepreneurs have in common. They present case histories of businessmen who built their own empires—ranging from Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, to Bernard Arnault, of the luxury-goods conglomerate L.V.M.H.—and chart what they consider the typical course of a successful entrepreneur’s career. The truly successful businessman, in Villette and Vuillermot’s telling, is anything but a risk-taker. He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting.”

I read Gladwell’s article recently and found myself realizing that I am simply not a predatory entrepreneur. However, the argument of the successful entrepreneur as the limited risk-taker made perfect sense to me. Of course the most successful hunters take the fewest risks! It was a sobering read for me as a business owner, and I am still trying to decide whether it’s too late for me to become a predator in my industry. This gets into the who nature/nuture discussion, however, and that’s a blog entry for another time.

Then, I chanced upon Bomey’s AnnArbor.com piece in which he argues that for the sake of the economy, “…taking risks is essential for Michigan.” Bomey also writes, “A key element of reconstructing Michigan, however, is culture change. Michigan residents are largely averse to risk taking.”

Hell yes we are! We’re midwesterners. Risky business is not the culture of assembly-line workers at any of the Big Three. Our state’s politicians didn’t take risks, but blindly supported a single-industry to the detriment of the state and its residents. Our U.S. senators and representatives have pork-barreled money for the auto industry for decades. They have ignored environmental issues and global warming. In Time magazine, Representative John Dingell was accused of “pandering” to the interests of Michigan’s auto companies. These folks failed to realize that putting all your eggs in one sedan would eventually cause the state’s economy to implode.

Bomey writes, “This generated a culture defined by an incredible work ethic and a suspicion towards entrepreneurialism.”

Let me give you some free advice: those so inclined should be very suspicious of becoming entrepreneurs. According to data from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, ”Two-thirds of new employer establishments survive at least two years, and 44 percent survive at least four years, according to a new study. These results were similar for different industries.”

Think carefully Padawan Jedi Entrepreneur: Would you take a job where there was a 56 percent chance you wouldn’t earn enough money to feed your kids or pay your mortgage? Yeah, me neither. Well, actually, it turns out I am kind of a risk-taker, but I didn’t choose food service, and my profit margins are pretty close to that free-range, organic turkey I mentioned earlier.

Now let’s talk economic development. The current economic development mantra in Ann Arbor is to fund start-ups. Ann Arbor SPARK and its LDFA master throw taxpayer money at what amounts to some very risky business investments. Neither Ann Arbor SPARK nor Board members on the LDFA have shown that the success rates for taxpayer financed start-ups are any higher than those of non-taxpayer financed start-ups. In other words, 56 percent of start-ups funded with our tax dollars will fail within four years.

Business investment is always a calculated risk—ask any banker or venture capitalist. The losses, one hopes, are offset by the wildly successful businesses that survive. If the Small Business Administration survival numbers for small business are accurate (and we have no reason to believe the SBA is out to exaggerate the numbers—like some local economic development outfits I know), this means that when economic development is focused on start-ups, there will be a return on the investment only 44 percent of the time. Those are not odds I like for taxpayer dollars.

That’s why bankers don’t generally get involved in funding start-ups without secured assets, either someone’s house or a loan guarantee from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Bankers give lines of credit to, and fund the expansion plans of, firmly established businesses. Heck, it’s tough for a start-up to rent office space. Landlords don’t want to sign three-year leases with companies that might fold in less than two years. It’s a brutal world out there for business start-ups because the folks with the money know the odds of start-up successes are under 50 percent.

This is also why Ann Arbor City Council needs to dissolve the LDFA, revoke the entity’s TIF, and return that money to our schools, library and transportation. Council needs to spin off Ann Arbor SPARK. SPARK should go and gamble its own money on start-ups.

Me? I’m all for an economic development plan for Ann Arbor that focuses on attracting and recruiting established small and medium-sized businesses to our city by expanding services, minding our infrastructure, paying real attention to non-motorized/alternative transportation, and offering economic development services through a city-controlled Office of Economic Development.

I don’t agree with Bomey that risk is going to rescue Michigan’s economy. Start-up entrepreneurism isn’t, statistics show us, the silver bullet solution to the economic woes our city and state face. We need to make Michigan and especially Ann Arbor magnets, and do it through offering the caliber of schools, city services, recreational opportunities and infrastructure that will attract established small and medium-sized businesses.

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The Politics of Captain Renault: Sabra Briere Is “Shocked” About Secret Backroom Dealing (With A Poll)

Filed under: Sabra Briere, city council, developers — Tags: A2Politico, Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce, Chuck Skelton, Hospitality Advisors Consulting Group, Jesse Bernstein, Mayor Hieftje, Northside Grill, Peter Allen, Roger Fraser, Sabra Briere, Sandi Smith, Stephen Rapundalo, Valiant group, Vivienne Armentrout — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am

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This dialogue is from the movie “Casablanca,” 1942

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]
Captain Renault: Everybody out at once!

First Ward Council member Sabra Briere recently sent around an email titled “clarifying information” to a group of her constituents and others whom (one imagines) she considers important disseminators of such emails. On the surface, it looks as though Briere is providing the public with insider details concerning the Library Lot RFP process, and the Mayor’s potential collusion with the Valiant Group. One could argue that based on Briere’s email that Mayor Hieftje, Roger Fraser and Jesse Bernstein planned to help the Valiant Group get their project built, and Mayor Hieftje stayed silent as a sham RFP process was initiated to mask the back-room deal struck by the men and the developers.

One does wonder why Briere stayed silent concerning plans she knew were in the works for a conference center when she cast her vote in favor of floating $45 million dollars in bonds to build the Library Lot underground parking garage.

Is Briere’s email breaking news? Nope. Not even close.

On April 19, 2008, Ann Arbor News reporter Judy McGovern published a piece in which she writes:

“The notion that Ann Arbor needs a large conference center comes up every now and then – and most recently, it happened on New Year’s Eve at Cafe Verde. Early that day, Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce President Jesse Bernstein and Washtenaw County Administrator Bob Guenzel were chatting over coffee. Guenzel said he’d like to see plans for an Ann Arbor conference center take shape. Bernstein agreed. And that got the ball – at a public standstill since 1989 – rolling again.”

The email is remarkable in the fact that Briere is hanging out to dry any number of local politicos, beginning with Mayor Hieftje, former Chamber of Commerce leader, Jesse Bernstein, City Administrator Roger Fraser, and Briere’s First Ward Council colleague, Sandi Smith.

Here’s is Briere’s January 18, 2010 email in its entirety:

Dear neighbors,

I know the RFP for the Library Lot isn’t the most important issue for everyone. In the past day, I’ve met twice with citizens to discuss the budget and learn from them more about the quality of information I should be receiving and the best ways to get the answers to my questions.

In government, transparency is important. Today’s coverage in the [Ann Arbor] Chronicle about last night’s Caucus and the Library Lot RFP once again makes that clear — but it’s hard to know when to tell something that isn’t your secret. Some of the things I’ve learned along the way as a member of Council haven’t been mine to share, but I’m happy to discuss everything I know about the proposals for the Library Lot.

Here’s some clarifying data for you, in case timelines help:

At our City Council retreat on January 10, 2009, Roger Fraser showed us some ‘preliminary’ drawings for a conference center. We were not provided copies of these drawings. Later requests for copies or any further information was denied — their very existence was denied — by the FOIA officer at the City.

On Sunday, June 14, 2009, at the end of Caucus, Mayor Hieftje asked me to come to his office so he could show me something. At that time, he loaned me a copy of a proposal titled “Ann Arbor Town Center” from Valiant Partners LLD, dated May, 2009. On its cover was a green and white sticky note stating “Thanks, John. This is pretty interesting. Sandi”.

I returned the original document to him the next day.

This is the same proposal that was later publicized as the “secret plan” for the conference center by Vivienne Armentrout on her blog, Local in Ann Arbor, in August, 2009.

The RFP for the Library Lot was issued in August [2009].

I heard nothing more about the cenference center until December 3rd, 2009. At the Holiday Breakfast of the Main Street Merchants’ Association, Jesse Bernstein, the former president of the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce, expressed his displeasure at the Library Lot RFP process and Council’s inability to ‘make up its mind’. He said there he, the Mayor and Roger Fraser had worked hard to get the deal for the conference center proposal, and now we were sending mixed signals to the developers. He said that everyone agreed that this was what downtown needed. I said I didn’t. We agreed to meet for breakfast.

On December 11, 2009, at 7:30 am, we met at the Northside Grill. Among other discussed items, Bernstein said he, Fraser and Hieftje had met with people from Valiant. The Valiant people had asked what they could do for the City. The ‘vision’ that had emerged from this meeting was that the City wanted a conference center. I do not know the date of that meeting, except that it had to have been prior to December, 2008. I also do not know if there was more than one meeting.

At our meeting, Bernstein said he felt betrayed. He said that Valiant’s proposal for a conference center was a consensus project, and that it was not fair that Valiant should have to jump through all of these hoops.

On Saturday, January 9, 2010, I spoke with Council member Stephen Rapundalo, who is the chair of the RFP advisory committee. I reported on all of the above.

I also said that, as part of the mandatory RFP process, Valiant had signed a proposal statement which said, in part: “The undersigned acknowledges that it has not received or relied upon any representations or warrants of any nature whatsoever from the City of Ann Arbor, its agents or employees, and that this Proposal is based solely upon the undersigned’s own independent business judgement.”

I said to Rapundalo that I questioned the validity of this acknowledgment since Fraser had participated in the design of the plan.

On Thursday, January 14, 2010, I met with Chuck Skelton, president of Hospitality Advisors Consulting Group, a firm that performs site analysis, feasibility and valuation of hotels all over the country. Peter Allen was also at our meeting. He had set up the meeting at my request.

Skelton said that he had met with Valiant principals in January, 2009 to discuss a hotel/conference center larger than the one currently before the RFP committee.

Skelton said that in a small market like Ann Arbor building a hotel/conference center would be impact on existing businesses. Typically, if the prospects were economically sound the City would not have to provide financing assistance.

Near the end of the meeting, Peter Allen asked, “ You mean there is no way a hotel can be successful? How about a boutique hotel?” Chuck responded by saying, “It is doubtful at this time given these market conditions.”

Sabra

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January 21, 2010

How Cheaply Can A Councilmember Be Bought Off?

Filed under: campaigns, politicians, politics — Tags: A2Politico, Amanda Maxwell, AnnArborChronicle.com, Christopher Taylor, Leslie Morris, Liz Brater, Richard F. Winters, Sabra Briere, Steve Kunselman, Vivienne Armentrout — A2 Politico @ 2:14 pm

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We live in a small town. There are about 56,000 adult, non-student residents in Ann Arbor. That’s a relatively small political gene pool. I know of someone who won’t run for City Council simply because the Council member against whom he would have to run is his neighbor.

If you’re A2P, you think, “So what? May the best neighbor win.” However, we’re also midwesterners. Nice midwesterners. Well, mostly. There are some Council members, including the one referenced above, whom an investigative piece published in the Ann Arbor News last June showed to be well, not so nice.

In a comment on another post, local blogger and former county Board politico Vivienne Armentrout suggests that it’s absurd to think a local politico can be bought off for $100. Former City Council member Leslie Morris writes over at AnnArborChronicle.com (where there was a rousing discussion of a post about First Ward Council member Sabra Briere on A2Politico) that local politicos can’t be bought off for $500.

Morris writes: “The notion that an Ann Arbor city council member could be bought (or even alter a vote or position) for a $500 campaign contribution is ludicrous, insulting and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the way our local political process operates. I spent six years on city council, worked on many campaigns for local office, and attended city council meetings as a citizen for years. During that time I observed (and participated in) many serious fights over controversial development projects, budget decisions, etc. As strange as it may seem to a naive and suspicious observer, the various participants in these fights actually believe in the positions they take, and are convinced that their opponents are wrong. City council members sacrifice huge amounts of their time, and considerable amounts of money to do their jobs. I have disagreed vehemently with many of them on numerous issues. I have even disliked some of them. But the thought that even a single one of them (including the ones I disagree with or dislike) could be bought for $500 is just plain silly.”

But that Leslie Morris and Armentrout were right. The truth is that Ann Arbor politicos can be impressed with miniscule amounts of money and opportunities to rub elbows with fat cat developers, state-level politicos, and the titled royalty who inhabit the University of Michigan. In our small town, it’s more about moving up the social pecking order than actual graft.

First off, let’s define by what we mean as “bought off.” Does this mean that the politico in question votes in favor of a particular project, or votes in favor of throwing city work to a particular individual? Does it mean that the politicos give political favors to their donors? Yes. Yes. And yes. Are we talking Blago-sized portions? Nope. I’m willing to bet the ranch that no one in local elected office is selling anything for $50,000 servings of greenbacks.

Third Ward’s Steve Kunselman ran for re-election to office on “ethics” and bringing back integrity to City Council. He has been in office since November, and the only guy singing and dancing about ethics is Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor. I sent Kunselman an email asking where he is on his campaign promise to bring integrity back to Council. His answer?

“I ran. Chris championed. We’re meeting.”

Does that answer mean Steve Kunselman considers ethics and integrity little more than convenient friends while campaigning? I hope not. It’s not good enough for him to say he ran on the issues and Chris Taylor is the one who will “champion” ethics. As I’ve written before, Chris Taylor has absolutely no standing to champion ethics for his colleagues on Council. Furthermore, these are the same people who simply broke every rule they wanted to before being caught by FOIAed emails. They won’t adhere to an ethics policy; it’s clear the veteran Council members believed for years, literally, they were above common sense, common courtesy, common decency, Open Meetings Act laws and their own Council rules already in place.

Council’s self-appointed ethics expert (thanks to his experience as an entertainment and intellectual property attorney, and his experience getting fingered by the Ann Arbor News in June of 2009 for, well, behaving rather unethically during City Council meetings) demonstrated more hubris than ethical behavior. So where’s Council member Kunselman on ethics? Voters have come to expect empty promises, but it is particularly dangerous to run on ethics, get elected, and then go mute on the subject.

Lord knows the Mayor isn’t going to bring up ethics anytime soon. He’s too busy cashing his checks from the Univeristy of Michigan. It could be argued that the University of Michigan saves millions every year by giving the Mayor and his wife jobs that pay, in total, under $40,000 per year, almost equal to the salary paid to the Mayor by the city. The Mayor has pointed out that current Michigan State Senator Liz Brater worked for U of M when she was mayor of Ann Arbor. As my mother might have said to Hieftje, “Yeah, well, and if Liz Brater jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?” It was just as unethical for Brater to cozy up to U of M as it is for our Mayor. At least Brater had a beard—her husband, Enoch, a tenured professor. Universities routinely hand out lecturer jobs to the spouses of tenured faculty. In the case of Mayor Hieftje, he has neither the tenured spouse nor the academic qualifications to teach graduate school at Michigan. So why is he there? Because he’s the Mayor of Ann Arbor, and it benefits the university of have our myaor in their pocket.

Luckily for local developers, and others who come to town to build, not to mention the University of Michigan, our local politicos are cheap dates. Small-town, small-plan, small-potato politicos who are happy with burger and fries-sized “donations” from people who make hundreds of boatloads of money off development deals.

Dr. Mary Sue Coleman, with her doctorate in playing hardball with our Mayor and City Council, has said that voluntary payments to the city in lieu of the millions in property taxes her non-profit doesn’t have to pay, just ain’t never gonna happen. (Coleman, of course, didn’t use the words “ain’t” or “gonna.”) Thus, for the Mayor with a B.A., a chance to teach at the University and pretend to be a “professor,” the chance to rub elbows with Deans and other titled nobility at U of M, and $16,000 a year is enough to co-opt him. The results of this relationship between our Mayor and the University? As opposed to negotiating with the university in the best interests of citizens, he recently gave U of M parkland on which to build a parking desk near U of M hospital. He even offered up $14 million dollars to help U of M build the parking garage. Ann Arbor citizens will not, however, be allowed to park in it “at first,” according to a a news piece about the parkland giveaway.

For Marcia Higgins, a $2,500 donation from the Firefighter’s PAC, while she chairs the Committee that negotiates labor contracts, doesn’t ring any ethical fire bells for her. However, that $2,500 donation was a huge amount of money in a campaign where the average donation was $50-$100. In Higgins’s campaign that PAC donation represented 40 percent of the total money she raised. In an Ann Arbor race, a $1,000 donation from a PAC is as close to feeling like a big-time player as any of our local politicos are ever going to get.

Interestingly, the Firefighter’s PAC stiffed Marcia Higgins this past August when she ran for re-election in a contested race, and soon thereafter found themselves threatened with layoffs, and subsequently forced to swallow a steep pay cut in exchange for a six month breather. Come June, the firefighters will find themselves once again the target of lay-offs or further reductions in salary and benefits. I’ll be watching their PAC donations closely this summer during campaigning season.

Add to this the interesting fact that Ann Arbor fits the profile developed by two researchers from Dartmouth of places where political corruption flourishes in the United States. Authors Amanda Maxwell and Richard F. Winters write in their paper “Political Corruption in America” that cities, “with well-informed and highly participant political cultures have lower rates of corruption.” In Ann Arbor’s last August primary election, fewer than 10 percent of registered voters went to the polls city-wide.

Of course, fitting a profile doesn’t mean there is political corruption. On the other hand, watching the Library Lot RFP twist & shout currently going on makes it hard to give Mayor and Council the benefit of the doubt. One of the six bidders had an 18-month head start and opportunities to pitch their “concept” in private to our Council members prior to the March 2009 vote to create the RFP to solicit proposals for the 1.2 acre Library Lot site. I wrote about the bidder’s contact with city staff and Council members here.

Perhaps what Ann Arbor suffers from most is advanced Cronyism. As I written before, the Mayor collected 35 percent of his campaign donations the last time he ran from those whom he’d appointed to the city’s many boards and commissions. In Illinois, that’s referred to as pay-to-play, but in Ann Arbor the amounts are so ridiculously low that to label it corruption seems a misuse of the term.

As always, I’d be interested to know what other A2 politicos out there think about the subject.

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The Original A2P Returns

Filed under: on blogging — A2 Politico @ 7:58 am

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Sorry to readers who had a tough time reading the site yesterday. There was a problem with a software update. There are three missing posts and oodles of comments that I’ll restore today. Then….it’s on to a new post. Look for one new post late this morning, and then another in the mid-afternoon.

Update: Got the missing posts and comments up again. If your comment has disappeared. Sorry.

In case you’ve missed the new feature, readers can now rate comments as well as entries. Have fun!

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January 19, 2010

A2 Politicos Running For State Offices Disappear After Declaring. Is It Something In the Water?

Filed under: campaigns — Tags: A2Politico, Arbor Brewing Company, County Commissioner Jeff Irwin, Liz Brater, Ned Staebler, Representative Alma Wheeler Smith, Representative Pam Byrnes, Representative Rebekah Warren, Rick Snyder — A2 Politico @ 10:42 am

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County Commissioner Jeff Irwin (53rd District House candidate). Representative Rebekah Warren (State Senate candidate). Representative Alma Wheeler-Smith (Democratic candidate for Governor). Ned Staebler (53rd District House candidate). All four have launched their campaigns replete with write-ups in the press. I wrote about Wheeler Smith’s candidacy here. I posted about Staebler in October. Rebekah Warren’s kick-off got a write-up on A2Politico in response to Warren’s uncanny ability to choose the worst date possible for her Ann Arbor cheese, crackers and stump speech party.

These four have, since launching their campaigns, stalled out or rather not really started their engines, ladies and gentleman, and gotten their campaigns into the demolition derby. Warren, just coincidentally while campaining, sent out a mailer on the taxpayer dime to “constituents” concerning her accomplishments in office. Interestingly, the mailer ended up in the mailboxes of “constituents” in Pam Byrnes’s 52nd district. It was shameless self-promotion, and to have mailed out the piece, ostensibly under the auspices of her office, was particularly smarmy. Warren has sent out multiple fundraising letters, and is having some trouble rustling up the cash she did the last time she ran. In 2008, Warren raised $63,000. Her current opponent, Representative Pam Byrnes, raised $114,000 for her 2008 52nd District House campaign.

If fundraising letters and a constituent mailer are all Warren’s got, her opponent Pam Byrnes is going to eat her for lunch.

If you’ve read the local newspapers recently, you’ve seen op-eds “written” by candidate Pam Byrnes. In January, Byrnes launched her campaign for Liz Brater’s Senate seat, in Ypsilanti, at the Freighthouse, and not in the comfy and clubby confines of the party room at the Arbor Brewing Company, in Ann Arbor. Don’t get me wrong, ABC (as the pub is known among local politicos who frequent the spot) is a great place for a party, but it’s also a “been-there-done-that” kind of campaign launch.

Pam Byrnes isn’t running a “been-there-done-that” campaign. If I were running against Representative Pam Byrnes, I wouldn’t waste time sleeping, because Byrnes isn’t the kind of person or candidate who’s going to sit around while her nail polish dries to get her campaign off the ground.

For starters, Byrnes has a web site up. Google her opponent Rebekah Warren and you get the web site she put up when she campaigned for the State House. Search for Staebler’s web site, and you get, I swear to Machiavelli, a placeholder page where his web page will be some day. His campaign launched in October 2009. He’s going around town tapping everyone for donations, and his campaign puts up a placeholder page? Ned Staebler wants to go to Lansing for two years to represent us. That he can’t get a web page up in three months augurs poorly for the notion he’ll arrive in Lansing ready to get down to business. (A2P Notes: The day after this entry, Ned Staebler launched his web site.) Ned Staebler’s sitting around waiting for his nails to dry. He’s doing it at local coffee shops on Saturdays, when he meets with whomever happens to show up.

Who campaigns by waiting for the public to come to them? To be fair, Staebler is also on Twitter. He Tweets from political events he attends. Somewhat disconcertingly, A2Politico has more Twitter followers than the guy running for the State House. I don’t know whether to feel popular or not, because neither A2P or candidate Staebler has 200 Twitter followers yet.

Fortunately for Staebler, his opponent Jeff Irwin is still dozing at the wheel. Irwin has a Facebook page, but little actual information out about his campaign issues, positions, etc…. Perhaps Staebler, Irwin and Warren consider winter the season of campaigning discontent. However, here’s my question: why declare your candidacy, and then disappear? It makes you look as though you’re lackadaisical, and gives the impression that you’ll go to Lansing and do the same thing.

As for State Representative Alma Wheeler Smith, Democratic candidate for governor, as much as I wish Ann Arbor Republican candidate Rick Snyder would give us all a break from his moderate Republican views, this guy is killing her. Smith’s campaign recently redesigned her web site (more interactive and more content). Smith is on Twitter, as well, and has 135 followers (sigh). She has just under 300 Facebook followers. Rick Snyder has 2,200 Facebook “friends.”

Both Snyder and Smith have chosen the “____________(insert candidate name) for Michigan” appellation, which I find somewhat disconcerting. Can both the Democrat and the Republican be “for” Michigan? Why, I wonder, aren’t either of them for the peeps in the state rather than the state itself? I digress.

So what is it with the Ann Arbor politicos Irwin, Staebler and Warren? Is there something in the water that compels A2 politicos to declare early, go on fundraising benders, then disappear? No one wants to go door-to-door in February, but putting up a web site isn’t rocket science, unless, of course, you declared before you had your platform defined. In that case, I can’t even begin to fathom why someone would do that. Such a move is just asking to be seen as wishy-washy and indecisive.

I imagine in April and May we’ll see a flurry of activity and I look forward to it. Until then, I’m drinking bottled water, lest A2P vanish suddenly.

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January 18, 2010

The Politics of Buying Local: Why I Haul My Lumber From Fingerle in My Japanese Car

Filed under: commerce, economic development, food, money — Tags: A2Politico, Ben & Jerry's, Bob Dascola, Buy American, Buy Local, Buy Local Berkeley, Chipotle, Chrysler, Cosi, Downtown Development Authority, Fingerle Lumber, George W. Bush, Gratzi, Home Depot, Kroger, Lowes, People's Food Co-op, Real Seafood, Red Hawk Grill, Starbuck's, State State Area Association, Sweetwater's, Tios — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am

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I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. auto companies launched their “Buy American” marketing campaigns in response to another deep recession brought on by an oil crisis that had gripped the U.S., along with growing competition from foreign automakers. Lee Iacoca took charge of Chrysler and saved the company from bankruptcy. The Buy American marketing campaign doesn’t evoke the same sense of urgency that it did when it looked as though the economy (and their own business practices) was going to take out one of Detroit’s Big Three. Buy American has transformed into “Buy Local.” If you think about it, it’s not exactly the same idea, but evokes the same sense of consumeristic camaraderie. The Buy Local slogan is meant to do that, of course.

“We are in this together,” Buy Local murmurs, “so why not help me out?”

I know why I should buy local, and I do buy local. However, A2P being A2P, I find myself questioning the Buy Local movement as closely as I question the Buy American movement. I was at a local metropark one summer, and a man walking past my Japanese car yelled, “Way to buy American!” I stopped and explained that when an American car company could match the resale value of my Japanese model, its reliability, safety and performance, I would gladly Buy American. I researched Fords and Chevys before I settled on my Japanese model. It was a totally Machiavellian purchase. In a decade, the car I chose will have retained much more of its value than any of the American models that I comparison shopped. The overall reliability record was better than the American models, according to Consumer Reports, and its performance was rated as superior, as well. The model was, in fact, a Consumer Reports Best Buy in its category.

Should I have bought American? For the life of me, I just can’t justify spending $25,000 on anything simply because of the geographic locality of the parent company as opposed to taking more objective criteria into consideration. For that matter, that Ford you’re driving may have been put together in Mexico with parts made in Canada. My Japanese car was built in Ohio by American workers.

I have the same issue with the current Buy Local movement. It seems a one-sided proposition, as if I exist as a consumer to keep local businesses in business. Isn’t that the job of the owner? Isn’t competition a basic tenant of capitalism—not to mention the Darwinism of business? I suppose what got me thinking about this was a comment made by a reader about the piece I posted about Ann Arbor Restaurant Week. He writes, “I will say that I have had great experiences with Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, and already have set up three reservations for next week. The food is great, fairly priced and it’s important to me to support our local businesses and economy.”

I pay attention to where I shop, but in a different way. I won’t step into Home Depot, because the company donates almost primarily to the national Republican Party. I refused to donate to George W. Bush’s campaign simply by staining my deck. I shop at Lowes, or our nearby hardware store. I always buy lumber at Fingerle Lumber, or one of the nearby mills. I do it because the lumber at Lowe’s is of an inferior quality, in my opinion, not because I want to support the Fingerle family’s business. I also do it because the customer service at Fingerle is unbeatable.

I can’t say that for all of our local shops. I am a member of the People’s Food Co-op, but the overall customer service blows. It has been inferior for as long as I’ve been a member—a looooooong time. I’ve come to conclude that it’s a culture within the organization. Gen Yers in raggedy jeans and dreadlocks don’t think they need to say “thank you,” or “hello.” That was fine in 1980, when Fourth Avenue was Whole Wheat Street. Back then, the Co-op was offering a unique product and experience, but there’s lots of competition for my business now. Kroger has organic produce that puts to shame what the Co-op stocks at higher prices.

Should I buy local, or buy the best looking organic beets and lettuce at the neighborhood K-Roger? I’m just asking, because I want the Co-op to succeed, but I also have a limited amount of money to spend on food. Should I eat over-priced food at local restaurants just because the restaurant is geographically “local?” Several Main Street and State Street businesses are chains, for instance. Do I eat at Tios, where I find the food not to my liking, or do I get my tacos at Chipotle on State Street, where the ingredients are of a better quality? Do I buy my tea at Starbuck’s on State or Sweetwater’s on Washington? (For the record, it’s Sweetwater’s.)

Berkeley, California’s Office of Economic Development has a Buy Local web page:

Buy Local Berkeley uses the definition for “locally owned and independently operated business” established by Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.

The five qualifying questions are:

My business/organization is privately held (not publicly traded). [Non-profits are considered privately held organizations]

The business owners, totaling greater than fifty percent of the business ownership, live in the 9 county San Francisco Bay (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma)? [Non-profits: Does 50% or more of your Board of Directors reside in the Bay Area]

My business pays all of its own marketing, rent and other business expenses (without assistance from a corporate headquarters outside the Bay Area).

My business can make independent decisions regarding its name and look, as well as all business practices, purchasing and distribution.

My business is registered in California, with no corporate or national headquarters outside of the Bay Area.

Would most Main Street and State Street Ann Arbor businesses meet the same qualifications that a Berkeley business does to be considered “local?” Ben & Jerry’s on State Street? Nope. Sweetwater’s Cafe on Washington? Absolutely. What About Real Seafood and Gratzi, that are a part of Main Street Ventures, Inc.? How about the restaurants on State Street? Cosi? Chipotle? Under the Berkeley system of identifying local businesses, neither would qualify. The Red Hawk Grill would, though.

I think in Ann Arbor, as opposed to Berkeley, Buy Local means something entirely less radically and honestly local. What if Ann Arbor Restaurant Week were limited to local restaurants that met the qualifications such as those outlined by the Berkeley Office of Economic Development? That would mean making some very hard decisions, and no doubt there would be some very angry “local” business owners. However, if Buy Local is simply a tent where every local business owner is welcome, doesn’t it cease to stand for true support of locally-owned and operated business?

Bob Dascola of the State State Area Association is a strong proponent of local business. He is also a vocal critic of absentee landlords who own our downtown buildings and charge rents that local business owners simply cannot afford to pay. Thus, on Main Street and State Street, we get chain businesses, perhaps owned by locals.

I think in Ann Arbor, the Buy Local trend is better interpreted as “Support Your Local Business Owner.” That keeps all of us, including the Board of the Downtown Development Authority, and local politicos, who should be grappling with these policy questions, from having to address the more complicated issues of what it means for local government to support local business owners.

What do you think? Would you support political policy and a movement to clearly differentiate between kinds of businesses as the Berkeley Office of Economic Development has done?

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The Politics of Buying Local: Why I Haul My Lumber From Fingerle in My Japanese Car

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